Village Voice's Scores

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For 11,162 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Hooligan Sparrow
Lowest review score: 0 Followers
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,708 out of 11162
  2. Mixed: 4,553 out of 11162
  3. Negative: 1,901 out of 11162
11162 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Praying with Lior
    Trachtman’s movie is not technically accomplished--the camerawork is run-of-the-mill, the structure is rambling--but it’s redeemed by the deliciously complex, practically Balzac-ian family at its center.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Witnesses
    The Witnesses forms a magnificent trilogy with "Son Frère" (2003), Patrice Chéreau's devastating account of fraternal devotion in the face of death, and the amazing, acerbic "Before I Forget," a brooding and bitter tale of survival coming soon from Jacques Nolot, here lending an iconic cameo as the proprietor of Manu's hooker hotel.
  3. The Silence Before Bach
    Not only very civilized--this cool, deliberate film suggests that Bach's music is the quintessence of European civilization.
  4. Rambo
    A sort of parody "Apocalypse Now," complete with listless coochie dancers entertaining the Burmese troops, the movie finds its own heart of darkness once Rambo drops the doctors in Burma.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How She Move
    Especially good are Wesley, whose expressions are a study in shifting thought, and Tre Armstrong as her street-hardened but good-hearted rival, a stock role that Armstrong fills with unmediated feeling.
  6. Meet the Spartans
    Witless, tasteless, formless spoof.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Untraceable
    Directed by Gregory Hoblit from a screenplay by a trio (a trio!) of whomevers, Untraceable hasn't the brains of a class-act psychothriller like "The Silence of the Lambs" (though it does reprise that film's titillating homophobia); worse yet, it lacks the balls to juice up the trashy verve of the "Saw" series.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
    I'm sure the pot-laced antics of these trashy dudes are, like, totally hilarious on Canadian TV, but they don't translate well to America or the big screen.
  9. The Air I Breathe
    The destiny-versus- responsibility hand-wringing is Philosophy 101, the camera angles straight out of film school, and the pacing strictly music-video. Plus, the ta-da! twist ending is foreshadowed roughly 20 minutes into the action, for those still interested.
  10. Lost in Beijing
    The prevalent shooting style is monotonous naturalism, as the camera buzzes between contentious actors and trolls after anything on the move. No performance registers quite so much as the capital city itself.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alice's House
    Alice's House is an utterly average foreign art-house film, with all the strengths and flaws that label implies.
  12. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
    Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu's brilliantly discomfiting second feature is one long premonition of disaster.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    U2 3D
    The performances, culled from seven shows on the “Vertigo” tour from Mexico City to Buenos Aires, burn with the old unforgettable fire.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Summer Palace
    The director is at his best portraying the dingy dorms and vivid idealism of college life; his film stalls when it meanders away from these particulars toward a sweeping but empty attempt at the epic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Teeth
    Veteran actor Lichtenstein, the son of Pop artist Roy, rarely finds a workable tone, muffling the splattery mayhem with sluggish pacing and a tendency toward camp. Still, even if the movie's little more than a curio, I love the thought of Lichtenstein at the pitch meeting: "It's Jaws meets The Vagina Monologues!"
  16. Cassandra's Dream
    Feels like one of Allen's laziest pieces of writing and direction, leaden with heavy metaphor and characters who rarely make it beyond the archetype--marionettes in a miserablist puppet theater.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cloverfield
    Cloverfield never stops to identify the why, whence, or whereto of its rampaging meanie—this relentless thriller stops for nothing—but as for what to call it, behold . . . al-Qaedzilla!
  18. Mad Money
    While it's all so breezy and zippy and girl-power peppy, it's Keaton who makes Mad Money worth a few bucks.
  19. 27 Dresses
    A forgettable, formulaic comedy so predictable that seeing it and skipping it are the exact same thing.
  20. Taxi to the Dark Side
    Taxi is an impressively blueprinted work. Still images--from autopsy tables, makeshift holding cells, the Oval Office--are selected and deployed to maximum effect.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Day Zero
    With ludicrous gravity and a narrow-minded view of courage and conviction, the film's what-if scenario is presented as a reality check to every ostensibly unimaginative male who's come of age in the draftless years since Vietnam.
  22. Still Life
    As usual, Jia's people tend toward the opaque--one of the movie's most enthusiastic conversations is conducted with ringtones. But his compositions have their own eloquence. Everything's despoiled and yet--as rendered in cinematographer Yu Lik-wai's rich, impossibly crisp HD images--everything is beautiful.
  23. First Sunday
    At first, the movie is over-anxious--trying too hard to squeeze out the laughs, pump up the soundtrack, ingratiate itself with the audience--and the straining is abrasive. But once Talbert gets distracted by keeping the plot clunking along, the comedy eases into relaxed sideline banter.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    Humorless, incoherent, and ugly as sin, this Christian-friendly production is as tragic as the candle wax that resembles a glob of man jam and opens Pa Grape's eyes to the meaning of his adventure.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Business of Being Born
    Epstein and Lake have crafted an absorbing, thought-provoking inquiry into what modern birth has become and how to make it better.
  26. Woman on the Beach
    Albeit not as textured as Hong's past few films, Woman on the Beach is no less engrossing--a rueful tale of karmic irony, self-deceived desire, squandered second chances, and unforeseen abandonment.
  27. The Killing of John Lennon
    Director Andrew Piddington's fastidiously researched, dubiously suspenseful character portrait is unable to salvage a lick of hindsight from the tragedy beyond "Murderous narcissists are people, too." (He's a victim of our celebrity-fixated culture? Oh, shut up.)
  28. There Will Be Blood
    This is truly a work of symphonic aspirations and masterful execution.
  29. Persepolis
    Persepolis is a small landmark in feature animation. Not because of technical innovation--though it moves fluidly enough, and its drawings have a handcrafted charm forgotten in the era of the cross-promoted-to-saturation CGI-'toon juggernauts--but because it translates a sensitive, introspective, true-to-life, "adult" comic story into moving pictures.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Bucket List
    Turns out The Bucket List is a meta-film, mostly about how these two legendary actors interact and what it means to be an actor in your own life.
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